


In love but I feel like I'm living it out

by 74217



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/74217/pseuds/74217
Summary: AU of seasons 6 to 9, from Erin's point of view





	1. Niagara

“God, I’m starving! Do you know where the vending machine is?” Kelly asks. 

“I think it’s around the corner.”

“How long has it been since we ate?”

“Well the rehearsal ended at six fifteen and it’s,” Erin checks the time on her phone. “One forty-eight now, so–”

“I wonder if they still do room service this late.”

“I’m not sure if they have room service here.”

“If they don’t, Jim and Pam really cheaped out. Whatever, I just want rice crispy treats anyway.”

 

Kelly and Erin go back to their room and sit on Erin’s bed. They flip through channels for a few minutes and end up on Friends reruns. They can’t find the guide, and everything is in the wrong order here. 

“I’ve never gone so far for wedding before. Niagara Falls isn’t even that great. Way better than working, though.” Kelly says. 

“I’ve never been to a wedding at all! I’ve always wanted to, they look fun. And Pam and Jim seem really good together.”

“Totally, such a love story.” Kelly’s not being sarcastic, Erin doesn’t think so at least, but she rolls her eyes anyway. “I hate them sometimes, though, like, it’s awesome that they’re so in love and everything, but they’re basically never apart, how are they still so happy all the time? They have this perfect happy ending romantic comedy life, I don’t get it! Who is that content? And they work together. I don’t see how they make that work. It’s not that I’m jealous of them or something, they’re so boring, but I don’t think it’s fair. I deserve a romantic comedy love story, too. I know stupid Ryan sure isn’t gonna give me one, I’d have to do all the work myself.” Kelly’s talking faster and faster and unwrapping her second rice crispy treat. 

“If you weren’t with him, maybe you would get over it.” Erin regrets saying this almost immediately. 

“Get over it? I know I’m confiding in you, but I don’t need you to tell me what to do, okay?”

“I was trying to give you advice, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I don’t need advice. I know how our relationship looks, I’m not totally oblivious, people think I am, but I think I can handle myself. You don’t know me that well.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Whatever, forget it.” Kelly shifts. “I’m not getting over crap until I find someone who will treat me right.”

“Yeah.” Erin pauses, then holds out her open bag of M&M’s. Kelly takes some. “When I was in high school there was this boy who was always super mean to me, and I hated him, and after we graduated I mostly just forgot about him, but then I saw him at a restaurant with some beautiful girl and they both seemed really happy, and I think it wasn’t fair. I deserved to be happier than him because I wasn’t mean to people. I got so mad and I felt like I had to do something, but what am I supposed to do about that? So I just left, and I kept being angry and sad for a while, but now I don’t even think about it anymore. Except for now.”

“Okay. What’s your point?”

“I think sometimes stuff just sucks for a while, but you start to care less about it, and eventually you’re fine. And you’ll get your happy ending.” 

“Well, we do have a passionate energy.” Erin didn’t mean with Ryan, but it would be pushing it to mention that now. “He’s so mean sometimes, though, and stupid. Not stupid, he’s actually really smart, but he always makes these dumb mistakes with our relationship that I never would. Like, I haven’t cheated on him a billion times. The mean, stupid guy is never the one the girl ends up with unless it’s a sad movie. Her real true love is more romantic, and he’s either the new guy that she has an instant connection with or he’s been right under her nose the whole time.” Kelly is smiling, but the rest of her face looks distant. She looks the same way as she says that maybe she’ll break up with him. Inaccessible, like she’s daydreaming, but not oblivious.

“That’s a good idea. Ryan sucks, you deserve someone who’s nice to you.”

“He’s really nice, sometimes.”

“All the time, though.”

“Yeah. Usually I don’t even want that, he’s pretty much half of the reason my life isn’t boring as hell. But I’m so tired of him. I don’t even know if he really loves me, and I at least deserve to know.”

“You do. I’m really sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? He’s the asshole. You’ve been nothing but nice to me since you started working here. Or at Dunder Mifflin, I mean.” 

“Of course I have been, you’ve been nice to me.” The end of “me” is bent and cut off by a yawn. Erin opens her eyes and notices how close Kelly is to her. The focus of her eyes flits between different features on Erin’s face. The tv seems louder now. It’s taking up half of her focus, and Kelly’s face, and the hair framing it, take up the other half. A few seconds pass, it feels like three or four, or maybe even six, or ten, and Kelly pushes a strand of hair from Erin’s cheek. One more second. Then she leans back onto the palms of her hands, and she’s looking at the tv again. 

“Hey, did you know that Cameron Crowe thought Friends was a ripoff of Singles? He wanted to sue.”

Erin swallows. “No. That’s interesting.”

 

At the reception, Michael insists on giving a toast to make up for his poorly received routine the night before. This one goes pretty well, actually. It’s sweet until he gets carried away with impressions and, thankfully, is cut off by Pam’s sister. By the time she’s done, Jim and Pam are practically crying. So is Erin. It’s a really good speech. 

Everyone’s dancing now except for a few people Erin doesn’t know, and Angela, who’s sitting and pretending not to watch, and Andy, who, despite his injury, is moving more than Angela. It’s nice, like café disco but fancier, and more well-lit. Erin talks to Andy for a while, and dances, sometimes with someone, like Michael or Kelly, and once with one of Jim’s cousins. 

Erin walks across the room to Kelly, who’s sitting down now at her table and drinking wine, with her chair turned away from the table so she can see everyone. Erin takes the seat next to her. People have started to filter out, but most of them are still here. Oscar, vexed, is explaining something to Kevin a few tables away. 

“Hey, what do you think they’re talking about? Probably that mess on his feet, right? Earlier he was trying to keep from falling down for, like, two whole minutes. It took him most of a Sara Bareilles song to stand up straight. You should’ve been there.” 

“That’s mean!” Erin says, but she’s laughing as she says it. She takes her hair down, which she’s been meaning to do, because dancing made it start to fall apart. Kelly crosses her legs and looks towards her. She says she looks nice. Erin was thinking of getting it cut short a while ago, she says she’s changed her mind. Kelly says she’d look good either way, but she should keep the bangs. Erin combs her hair with her fingers, and Kelly looks over at Jim and Pam. 

“They are so happy, I’m not even mad anymore. You know, Jim was, like, insanely in love with Pam forever, I didn’t think it was gonna happen.”

“I guess you never know how stuff like that is gonna turn out. It’s like a mystery.”

They keep talking, Erin watches Kelly’s fingers drumming on her knee. They spend most of the remainder of the night, which turns out to be a little over an hour, sitting there.


	2. The Princess Bride

Over a year goes by after the wedding without Kelly breaking up with Ryan, at least not for more than a week at a time. Not that she was supposed to break up with him, and not that it matters, she only said “maybe,” but Erin has been paying attention. It makes her mad, but not mad at Kelly, just mad; at Ryan, maybe, or maybe nobody. She isn’t sure. She gets in the habit of re-organizing pens and candy, usually by color, any time her muscles tense or her face gets hot. She knows it’s none of her business who Kelly dates. When she thinks about it, or about her, she can feel herself forming a lie. 

It’s a slow day. Erin hasn’t been doing much in the last hour besides spinning in her chair and talking to Kelly, who’s been standing by the reception desk for about five minutes and is currently shocked that Erin has never seen The Princess Bride. 

“Seriously? How?”

Erin shrugs.

“Okay, well it’s awesome. Plus, you like all those Disney movies, right? This is kind of like that, because it’s a fairy tale, plus it’s funny and romantic, you would love it, I just know it.” They make plans to go to Kelly’s that day. She has the dvd.

It’s overcast when Erin gets there, and by the time they start watching it’s storming. Kelly has a lot of soft blankets at her house, which is good, because it’s kind of cold. And she was right, Erin loves the movie. They have to keep turning the volume up to hear over the thunder, which isn’t too close, but close enough to make the power go out right when Buttercup and Humperdinck are about to get married. Erin yells, half in surprise and half in frustration. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Kelly “This is bullshit, there’s only fifteen minutes left.” 

“You have to tell me the rest.”

“Well duh, I’m not gonna let you watch that much without knowing how it ends.” Kelly seems to have a surprising amount of the dialogue memorized; Erin wouldn’t really know, but it sounds like the movie. Erin likes Kelly’s retelling of the story better. 

When Kelly finishes summarizing the end of the movie, they keep talking about it. Then the subject changes, and changes again, and then Kelly asks about Gabe. Erin feels her cheeks slump and the corners of her mouth get sore. It surprises her. She takes too long to respond, so Kelly asks if she’s going to break up with him, and says she gets it, he’s kind of weird. This is the first time Erin’s thought about it. 

 

“Pam?” Erin steps in between her and the door as she leaves the bathroom. “You order office supplies, right?”

“Yeah, do you need something?” 

“My mouse is broken. It moves around the screen really fast, I think someone spilled coffee on it. It smells like coffee.”

“Okay, I can get you a new one.” Erin remains in the doorframe. “I was just gonna go back– do you need something else?”

“How is your relationship with Jim so good?” 

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t think I like Gabe.”

“Oh, well that’s kind of a staple of a good relationship, liking the other person.”

“Yeah. Makes sense. I guess I probably should break up with him then.”

“Yes, Erin, you probably should.”

So she does.

For a while Erin hadn’t really been bothered by the fact that didn’t like Gabe–or find him funny, or want to kiss him, or have sex with him–she just assumed she would like him eventually. That’s why they started dating. He asked her out, and she accepted, because why not? If she didn’t think about it, she didn’t care, but now she does, and she wonders why she ever thought it was worth it to keep dating him. It’s not like she was throwing away a long, committed relationship. It’s not like she doesn’t know what it’s like to be happy with someone. She was happy enough with Andy to date him, until she wasn’t. She’s happy enough with Kelly, right now. And she can’t say she’s never thought of Kelly that way, or girls in general. She knows that, she’s accepted it, she just hasn’t spent any time with it. She didn’t want to grow to care about it. She doesn’t want to think about it now, either, she just wants to immediately come to whatever conclusion she eventually will. She’s pretty sure that includes liking Kelly.


	3. Chapter 3

Kelly is standing over the reception desk, elbows perched on the edge. She’s talking about how Ryan has been ignoring her a lot lately, which he has. Erin imagines it must be more work to pay that little attention to someone than it is to just talk to them. Kelly says she might have to do something drastic, or she’s “gonna end up becoming some hag cat lady. Like Angela.”

“Please,” Dwight interjects, “how many animals do you think you can sustain? Not that cats even count.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I would never do that, I was being sarcastic. And plenty, jackass.” She turns her head back to Erin, returns to the conversation about Ryan, veers off topic into the matter of celebrity relationship drama, then back again. He really has been awful lately–who does he think he is? They voice this at the same time, affirming the other’s point. “He’s such a fixer-upper, and I’ve been fixing him up too long.” Familiar. “Where to go from here?” She doesn’t say it like a question. 

“Yeah...” Erin hears an abrupt bang followed by Dwight shouting “come on!” She looks over, then back to Kelly, too quickly to register whatever sight she saw. She doesn’t care much. 

“I’m serious, what am I supposed to do? I’m so bored of this.” She sighs. “I’m sure I’ll get back with him in a month, so it doesn’t matter.” Erin has never wanted to touch someone this much, and been so aware of it. What weird timing. She smiles. 

“I guess do whatever you think is a good idea.”

 

Erin and Kelly are trying on clothes, most of which they don’t intend to buy, in the dressing rooms of the Banana Republic at the mall. “Hey,” says Erin, walking out of the stall. “Check out these pants. They’re two hundred dollars, I can’t believe they sell pants this expensive at the mall. I look so sophisticated.”

“Yeah, you look so classy and chic right now, I love it.”

The next time Erin comes out, Kelly has changed, too. She’s wearing a dark blue dress, and she tries to give an apathetic fashion model glare over her shoulder, but it doesn’t work. “This is my favorite one so far. Touch it, it’s so soft.” She holds out the loose fabric of the skirt in her hands for Erin to touch. It is soft. The dress fits her perfectly, it has short sleeves and a belt at the waist. Erin pictures running her hand over the little bow, and the belt, and over Kelly’s hips, and she pulls her hand away and tries to think about her expensive pants. 

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

Erin is trying different hairstyles in the mirror the next time Kelly walks out. “Okay, so I think the coat looks really good with this shirt because of the colors, it looks really weird with everything else. But.” She takes the coat off. “The shirt looks a lot better with nothing over it, because it has these pretty ruffles on the straps. See?”

“Oh, that’s really pretty. Elegant.” 

“And you don’t notice it when I have the coat on, but there’s so much fabric in this skirt, and there was no room in the stall, but I bet it goes out really wide if you spin. I’m gonna try it.” 

“Really? It’s not that much bigger here.”

“Nobody’s around.” Kelly pulls her feet together and balances. She spins around twice, then loses her balance and stumbles forward for footing. Erin Grabs her arms and she stops, and Kelly begins laughing. Then Erin does. Kelly props herself on Erin’s fixed arms. The laughing fades, Erin notices she’s close enough to feel her breath. She kisses her. She kisses back. Erin feels a surge of joy and relief that almost overwhelms her and, for a second, until Kelly pulls back, it’s worth the nerves. “Uh,” she swallows. “What was that for?” 

“You just looked really pretty.”

“Well it was nice. I’ve always kind of wanted to kiss a girl.” Kelly’s face becomes hard again. “But, just to be clear, I don’t wanna… date you. I mean I’m sure you know that anyway, but I’m with Ryan. Plus, I’m very, super straight. This is one thing, one time.” 

“Right, yeah, I know, I get it I just– I wanted to try it, I guess. I don’t…” Erin doesn’t know how to finish her sentence. There’s nothing she wants to say. She can’t believe she did that. She can hear Kelly’s voice saying something’s “...totally not weird.” She missed the first part, but she bets she can guess the gist of it.


	4. Chapter 4

Erin is eating in the office kitchen alone. She’s been unceasingly uncomfortable for the last two days. Her chest feels tight, and she pushes away every feeling she has before it turns into something worse, she doesn’t know what. Things are going better outside, exactly the same as they always are. Sometimes there’s something to watch, like Dwight trying to inform Jim about topsoil types. That’s kind of fun. Not fun, exactly, but it’s better than nothing. It’s certainly not fun to think about, though, when she’s slightly nauseous and sitting alone (even if by her own choosing.) It’s not fun to think about a lot of things, a lot of weird little things that don’t have anything to do with her, or Kelly, or anything at all. She tilts her head back so she doesn’t cry, because she really feels like she’s going to, which is so stupid and embarrassing. She wipes the water outside her eyes with her fingers. Pam walks in. 

“Hey Erin.” She looks at her. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” She answers. “I broke up with Gabe. You probably noticed, he’s been pretty annoying about it.”

“Yeah, I have.” She tries not to say that like it’s obvious. She turns back to the counter and reaches for a mug. 

“I liked somebody else, but nothing’s gonna happen. It’s fine though, because I didn’t really think anything would, so who cares.” 

“Sorry, that sucks.” 

“She does not reciprocate my feelings.”

“Oh.” Pam puts down the coffee pot and looks at Erin again. “I didn’t know you…”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. I just wanted to tell somebody, I guess. I hope this isn’t weird.”

“No, it’s not. I hope you feel better.” She says this sweetly, pours her coffee and leaves. Erin bends the tines on her plastic fork. 

 

A week later, Kelly breaks up with Ryan. This time, it sticks. She doesn’t make a scene about it, or even mention it, she just comes into work one day and isn’t really talking to him anymore. Not in the same way she used to, where she was trying to make him want her more. She acts differently around him, a way Erin hasn’t seen before. She isn’t sure if other people have noticed, but she has.

 

It takes a couple days for Kelly to actually tell her. Erin has to bring some stuff over to the annex for Toby, and Kelly says she loves her shoes, are they new? They are new. So they talk about shopping for a while, and they decide to go to the mall on Thursday because there’s a sale at Bath & Body Works, and then Kelly says that she dumped Ryan. She says it matter-of-factly and almost shockingly deadpan, in a way that must be deliberate. Erin knows how Kelly talks, and this is an effect she has practiced. As soon as she responds, Kelly changes the subject back to how she doesn’t like scented lotion.

So they meet at the mall. It’s normal this time, routine. They haven’t been talking about it, and they continue not talking about it. Erin gets a lot more hand sanitizer (ten bottles) than she had originally planned (none,) and Kelly buys a lot of things in the same flowery, vanilla, purple colored scent. Erin buys her stuff first. She waits for Kelly, trying to kill a couple minutes by opening bottles of thing she’s already smelled, and starts staring at the sticker on the lotion she’s holding. She tilts it back and forth and watches the iridescent flowers on it, but she doesn’t read the text. She lets her eyes unfocus. She hears Kelly’s “totally not weird” buzzing in her head.

“Want to go to that mexican place?” Kelly asks. 

Erin hadn’t realized she was done at check out already. She’s uneasy. She makes up a lie about why she has to leave now, actually, which she regrets almost immediately. She doesn’t like to lie, and for such a stupid reason. No reason, actually, she doesn’t know why she did it. She tries to swallow, impulsively, and notices her throat is too dry. She’s already changed her mind, she doesn’t want to go home. She’s hungry, too. But she said it. 

“Oh, I– yeah I should go, too. It’s my sister’s birthday and I haven’t called her, so, gotta do that, I guess.” Kelly laughs, her cheeks flush. She turns her face away. They leave.


	5. Lunch

Sometimes Erin and Kelly stay late after work just to sit around and finish a conversation about something, and maybe one about something else, after that. On two evenings they sit on the couch near reception talking until the sky starts to get darker. They talk about work stuff, and gossip, and tv shows, and things they want to do, and childhood memories rallied by some obscure detail of the conversation. Erin complains about Gabe, who is a lot worse after he’s been broken up with, and Kelly complains with her. But except for a couple mentions in passing, they don’t talk about Ryan. Erin stops wondering. As much and as often as they talk, they don’t invite each other out anymore. Erin doesn’t want to make the first move. It wouldn’t really be the first, of course, they’ve been friends for a while, but it feels different now. She won’t risk messing up. 

It is her fault, though. She was so weird about just getting food, and Kelly could probably tell she was lying. And it’s different, anyway, Erin thinks, if you go out during lunch. Nothing weird happens during lunch at work. Why should something weird happen during lunch at some restaurant? Hers has disappeared from the fridge, anyway. When she closes the it, she exclaims loud enough for Toby to get up and look through the door to the kitchen. She turns to Kelly, sitting at the table. “Somebody took my lunch.”

Kelly peels the top off her yogurt. “Sucks to be you.”

“Hey, what do you say we go out? Me and you. I’m so hungry, I didn’t eat breakfast. I know it’s the most important meal of the day, nobody lecture me.” She looks around, despite nobody else being there–maybe she’s talking to Toby–then back at Kelly. “I could use some company.”

“Sure.” So they go.

 

“...So I told him, you know what, screw you Ryan Howard! I don’t need you anymore!” Kelly is no longer eating, just talking to Erin from across the table. They haven’t been there very long, it didn’t take much time for the conversation to turn to a topic that was practically begging Kelly for a monologue. She usually doesn’t hold back, and now she has been for a while. “And I really don’t, I don’t need anyone. Ryan makes my life so dramatic, and I’ve always liked that, but I was never happy for that long, and for a while that was totally worth it, like, I didn’t even care, the drama made me happy. But then it stopped making me happy, it was just drama, and it was the same drama over and over again, and it was so intense but it was also, like, somehow mind numbingly dull. It was just me getting my heart broken over and over. I thought ‘I need to stop letting my heart get broken and find somebody better.’ But then, maybe a week later, I started freaking out again, because who the hell is this mystery guy I’m waiting for? Like, I’m putting off being okay until I start dating someone new, who might just turn out terrible anyway, and if he does it could take me years to realize it just to be right back where I am. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to be happy, just wait for somebody to sweep me off my feet? No thank you, who knows if that’s even gonna happen! I’m gonna force myself to learn how to stay single. I wish life was like a romantic comedy, but it’s not. It’s stupid and you have no idea what’s gonna happen, and I could even end up turning super fat and ugly, or just…” Kelly doesn’t seem to notice she’s crushing a potato chip in her hand. “Stay exactly the same, and still have nobody that cares about me.”

“I care about you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course I do, we’re friends! You have me. As long as you want me, you do.”

“Thanks.”


	6. Welcome Party

She hadn’t not liked Tallahassee. It was nice, the people were nice, but it wasn’t her home. This wasn’t the type of thing that used to faze her, after all, she’s had a few. Somehow it does now. She figured maybe she could make it home, and she wished that she was more willing to, and that she could make herself stay there long enough to really know the place. The people. She couldn’t. She used to know better how to be lonely without letting it seep into the decisions she made, but she forgot. Now she’s going to Scranton, with a guy she loves, or at least a guy she likes enough to leave Florida with. 

“Can we stop up here? I have to pee,” Erin asks

“Yeah, we’ve only got twenty minutes left, though.”

They stop. Erin goes to the bathroom and stares at herself in the smudged mirror. She’s done getting her heart broken, she tells herself. She’s done getting her heart broken. She’s done getting her heart broken. She tries to say it in different ways in her head until one of them clicks, and none of them do. Andy isn’t going to break her heart, she knows that’s not the problem. She isn’t sure what is. Something just isn’t right, it isn’t what she wanted. She feels regret pulling at her, trying to draw her to the concrete floor, put an invisible wall between her and the world so she won’t feel so much. She doesn’t know where it’s coming from. She used to want this. Three weeks ago, this would have been perfect, and now it’s happening and it’s not quite right. This relationship is two days old and it feels distant, though Erin suspects that feeling is only on her end. She wishes she could hate him so she would feel better about not wanting to be with him. If anything, Andy is getting his heart broken. That isn’t something she wants to do again. She looks up. She tries to twist up her face really small in the mirror, and then she makes it normal again, and just keeps staring at herself until someone else walks in, and she leaves. The air feels colder when she steps back outside than it was before. 

She turns her body to Andy, sitting in the driver’s seat, right when she sits down.

“I have to break up with you. I don’t think we should be together.” 

“Is this because of what I said about you to Jessica? I told you, I didn’t mean that, I love you.”

“I don’t know. I just can’t do this.” 

“Okay.” He looks forward through the windshield. “You said you loved me.”

She had loved Andy. Maybe she even loved him when she said she did, but she doesn’t know. Why doesn’t she know. 

“I’m sorry, Andy, you were just too late, it’s–it’s not there anymore.” He looks like he’s about to cry, and trying not to yell. Erin feels awful, almost sick, and the relief she feels somehow makes it worse. The sweat on her skin is sticky and suffocating under her clothes. She feels like her skin is throwing up. 

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Andy.”

Andy looks away, twice he starts to say something and decides against it. He doesn’t respond for what she thinks is a very long time. “I guess this will be an awkward drive, huh.” He forces a laugh. He’s right. Erin wishes she’d gone back on her own. 

Erin watches other cars through the window on the way back. A few months ago, after the Christmas party, Kelly drove Erin home because she was “so fucking drunk and probably going to puke or something.” Erin was mostly silent in the car. She had drained all the words out of her brain at the party. That’s not how she feels now, but it’s what she’s comparing it to. She thanked Kelly for being mean to Jessica for her, even though she knew Kelly didn’t need to be thanked for that. Kelly hugged her when she dropped her off, and Erin stood there for a long time without letting go because she didn’t want to go inside. She doesn’t remember how cold it was, but it must have been cold. She remembers waking up with all her clothes still on. She remembers saying to either Kelly or her pillow that she’s her best friend. “I think at some point, in my head, it just sort of clicked that we’re not meant to be.” She could have kept it at that. 

 

“Wow, barely two days? You almost beat my record,” Kelly says when Erin tells her. “Why’d you even come back, then? That’s what everyone’s wondering, you know. I’d ditch this place.”

“I don’t like humidity, it was a bad idea.” She twists her earring. “I missed it here. You know, when I broke up with him, I wasn’t even really sure why I was doing it, I just really felt like I had to.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve done that. Mostly with Ryan. But it never lasted. I always need to have a reason, otherwise we just get back together the second I feel good again, because I don’t have any reason to remind myself of why we broke up except some stupid feeling that’s already gone.”

“Well that’s not gonna happen to me, Kelly.” Erin says this a little more defensively than she means to. “I’m serious about it. I made the right call. I got back together with Andy because I still had feelings for him, I think, and even though I made the right decision the first time by not getting back together with him, I trusted Irene‘s advice more than my instincts, and it didn’t work. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to come home. I don’t want to date anyone right now, I’m just bored of it.”

“How are you bored? You haven’t even been dating. Except Andy for, what, forty hours? I’m surprised you aren’t being tortured by loneliness, breaking up with a guy you were in love with for months. Not that you should be, I actually think it’s really cool that you’re so okay when you’re on your own. You’re so calm about it, even though everyone knows you guys have basically been routinely crushing each other’s hopes for years.” Despite how much Kelly is rubbing it in, it’s a sincere compliment. Erin doesn’t feel calm, though. If she seems that way, it’s probably because she’s been trying so hard to. She she feels like everybody has been paying attention to how her and Andy act around each other. She doesn’t want to seem as unsettled as she is by a situation that she created. Kelly takes Erin’s lack of a response after a second and a half as a queue to continue, and tells her that she missed her. She expected it to get more boring around there, and it totally did. Erin had missed her, too–it’s easy for her to make friends, and to find delight in a situation made up of things that are menial, but there isn’t anything like knowing somebody.


	7. Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> takes place a few weeks post season 8

Kelly is at Erin’s house. They are sitting on the couch eating microwave popcorn from the bag and watching a seemingly endless loop of various police procedurals. Erin finds procedurals are more fun to watch with other people. They make predictions about what will happen, and make up the rest of the story when an episode is part of a plotline they haven’t seen the rest of. Kelly recognizes famous actors who have small parts in really old episodes, and sometimes she pauses because it reminds her of some of some recent drama she knows absolutely everything about, like one of the magazines at the CVS checkout. She has her own opinions on it all, of course. It’s pretty interesting to Erin. Celebrities have such exciting lives. At around eleven they change the channel to Seinfeld reruns that turn into infomercials after the third episode. They talk through one for potato peeling gloves for a while, then talk less, and by the time the gloves turn to a workout routine dvd set Kelly is crunched up on the couch with her cheek pressed to the arm, eyes closed.

“Are you falling asleep?” Erin asks. 

“Mhm.”

“Don’t sleep on the couch, it’s so short. You’ll be all sore in the morning.”

“That’s what she said,” Kelly mumbles.

“Come on, you can sleep in my foster brother Reed’s room. He’s not back until tomorrow.”

“Ugh. I don’t wanna sleep in some boy’s room, who I haven’t even met. It’s bad enough I didn’t wash my face.”

“Don’t worry, he’s super clean.”

“Can’t I just sleep with you? Your bed’s big enough.”

“Sure.”

Kelly falls asleep almost immediately, and Erin goes back out to the kitchen for a glass of water. She wipes the beads of condensation from her palms on her sweatpants and goes back to her room. The sheets are cooler than the air, and her right arm, the side next to Kelly, is warm. Even though the air is warm, too, and a little humid, it feels nice. She lies there for a minute, shifts, and fumbles to take her socks off with her toes. She lies still again, looking at the ceiling, then looking at the back of Kelly’s head and listening to the combined noise of her breathing and the hum of insects outside. She pulls her left arm to her chest and turns on her side, facing Kelly. She falls asleep. 

 

The next day, a Sunday, they want pancakes. Erin is sure she has eggs, but she doesn’t, so they go to a diner near her house. They sit in a booth, brightly lit, like most of the room, by the reflection of the sun on a building across the street. The diner is glossy, and smells so heavily like food and syrup that it might make her sick if she wasn’t so hungry. They sit down, order, and eat. A feeling of ease floats between them, and the air is still. They’re both still kind of tired, even though it’s almost the afternoon. They finish eating everything except a plate of home fries split between them, and Erin keeps drinking her iced tea while they wait for the waiter to come back. Kelly makes her laugh enough for her to feel the iced tea about to come up through her nose, and pulls her hand to her face to stop it. The jerk of her arm almost spills her drink, and she reaches her other hand out to stop it, but Kelly reaches out first. Thank God, Erin moved too slow to have caught it. When her hand lands on Kelly’s, the cup is shoved left and tea spills onto their fingers. Kelly only stifles her laughter for half a second and places her hands on the table, she glances around to see if anyone’s looking. Erin smiles and wipes the small amount of spilled tea off her hands and places them on the seat. She looks back up and runs a napkin over the bottom of the cup. They pay and leave. Erin notices a feeling of delight and rattledness, strong as ever, that she thought she had successfully locked away.


	8. Chapter 8

Erin is standing in front of the bathroom sink, dabbing her blueberry yogurt stained shirt with a wet paper towel. Kelly comes out of the stall. “Yikes.”

“I know, I spilled.” Erin turns to her to show her the extent of the damage. There’s a line of pale purple goop from the neckline most of the way to the bottom of the shirt. “Is this okay? Should I be using seltzer or something?” 

“I’d just throw it out.” Erin sighs. “Or, I’ll help you,” Kelly says, and splashes her with an impressive amount of water from the running faucet. 

“Oh, my god! Kelly, come on, that’s not funny!” It’s a useless thing to say–she catches herself in the mirror and sees a smile that’s unrestrained. Kelly’s is more of a smirk.

“Mmm, I think it’s a little funny.” Erin flicks water at her face. Kelly takes a second to blink it away. “And I have waterproof mascara, so if you’re trying to make me mad, it won’t work, I’m totally serene.” Erin rolls her eyes, the only change in her expression. She jumps a little at the opening of the door. When Angela walks in she points a slight glare at them, huddled by the sink. She tells her the phone rang and nobody was there to answer it, and heads for the stall. The sudden reminder that there is a world outside–where, for three more hours, she has a job to do–isn’t enough to make Erin leave and forget about her top, but it is enough to make her take a step backwards from Kelly.

Kelly looks back at her again. “Don’t worry about this, I have a t-shirt in my car you can borrow.”

 

Kelly is at Erin’s house, they’re sitting on the bench on back patio flipping through magazines. It’s the evening, and it’s warm and blue outside. Kelly looks up and flips her magazine, open pages down, onto the bench. “I just remembered, I brought you something! It’s in my car, hold on, I’m gonna get it.” Kelly comes back a minute later holding a small plastic shopping bag, which Erin stands up to grab. “Earbuds.” 

“Oh my god, thank you.”

“Well it’s my fault yours broke,” she says. “Although I kind of did you a favor, because they were ugly.” 

Erin laughs at this. “Yeah, they were.” She pulls at the plastic around them. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s an earbud splitter, so we don’t have to share. You can plug in two.”

“That’s cool,” Erin says, looking at Kelly and not the thing in her hands. “You’re the best.”

“You think so?” She glows.

“Yeah, I–I really like these and I appreciate your friendship.” She sounds weirder and more stiff than she had hoped. She twists the bag in her hands. 

Kelly’s smile fades as Erin talks, but doesn’t go away. She looks slightly away from Erin’s eyes, neither of them speak for a moment. Erin tries not to panic, but she thinks Kelly knows. She’s liked her before, it couldn’t be hard for her to figure out what that looks like. Kelly speaks–thank God. “You know, two weeks ago, two and a half, I kissed someone,” she swallows and continues. “Who you don’t know, and they had the same kind of berry chapstick that you used to use, I could tell. How funny is that?”

“Yeah. Okay.” It’s the wrong response, but Erin is trying to process the statement. It seems out of the blue, and kind of weird to mention. Neither of them is willing to acknowledge the implicit meaning of her words, but Erin knows they both remember when she kissed her. That’s when she wore that chapstick, she hasn’t used it in about a year. It would probably be easy to for someone to identify after being kissed by her, she thinks. She used a lot, because she had to. Erin liked that chapstick because it tasted good and it made her lips pink, that was the only reason she bought it more than once, it wasn’t very effective. Out of the limited number of guys she’s met who actually use chapstick, none of them would buy that. She unwittingly raises her eyebrows at Kelly. 

“I don’t know why I said that,” Kelly forces a laugh. “I just keep thinking about it, because it’s so weird, right?”

“Totally, weird.” Erin tries to put together a more sincere response, but she can’t collect her thoughts in time. She can tell Kelly is hovering around what she wants to say, being sure to give herself plausible deniability, the same way she would, and had planned to do. It doesn’t feel worth it, now, to keep that going. “I really like you, Kelly, and I don’t want to just be your friend.” 

It takes two seconds–which Erin expected to be weird and painful, but were more of a relief–for Kelly to close the space between them. She kisses her warmly, earnestly, and she tries not to stop when she starts to smile a little. Her hands feel hot on the sides of Erin’s face. Her lips are soft, and her hair smells fresh and sweet, like she just washed it. When it’s over, Kelly makes that high-pitched noise she sometimes does when she’s excited. Erin laughs. 

“God, I can’t believe I did that! I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long.” 

“Really? How long?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly sighs. “Like, forever. Mostly since after you came back from Florida.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t say anything either.”

“Yeah. I guess I didn’t. I didn’t think it would matter.”

“I thought I completely blew my only shot with you, I was too mean–”

“You weren’t mean, it was just weird. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Kelly smiles again. “I shouldn’t have pushed you away, before, I should’ve just made out with you in the dressing room. Until some rando walked in and it got super awkward.”

Erin responds to this by kissing her again.


End file.
